Customer and user experience management is not easily defined (or understood for that matter). The reason? Not only do 'Net professionals define "experience" differently, but the manner in which its optimization is approached varies greatly as well.
Gartner defines customer experience management (or CEM) as "the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy." That's somewhat of an idealized view of such initiatives, of course, considering that most enterprises are doing whatever is in their power to simply get prospects in the virtual door and prevent their hasty departure, putting off until later those (albeit more meaningful) opportunities to "meet or exceed" customer expectations.
What should be clear to those interested in measuring, monitoring and optimizing the user and customer experience is that it often requires significant process change within an enterprise and many technologies to accomplish. That alone may frighten and discourage enterprises from investing more heavily into initiatives of this nature, but the return can be quite substantial.
Enterprises that want to derive a benefit from customer experience optimization initiatives must take advantage of all their enterprise's available data and many different third-party technologies simultaneously in order to offer better, more personalized, interactions and stronger, more reliable relationships. That includes concentrating efforts on gathering customer feedback, establishing an ongoing commitment to developing and improving both digital and traditional channels, continually seeking opportunities to transform data into useful insights (in real-time), creating more valuable content based on those insights gathered and making it actionable across the enterprise - from the C-suite to front-line support representatives.
In this month's Top 50 at Website Magazine, explore solutions that are positioned atop the vast "customer experience" management software space. Readers will find solutions for customer feedback, Web analytics and predictive marketing, as well as systems designed from the virtual ground up to help enterprises optimize the digital experience on behalf of their users.
1. Google.com
2. Adobe.com
3. Zendesk.com
4. IBM.com
5. HubSpot.com
6. SurveyMonkey.com
7. Qualtrics.com
8. Freshdesk.com
9. SiteSpect.com
10. Optimove.com
11. Desk.com
12. SAS.com
13. Kissmetrics.com
14. Medallia.com
15. Hotjar.com
16. UsabilityTools.com
17. OpinionLab.com
18. Unbounce.com
19. Mixpanel.com
20. Clicky.com
21. Optimizely.com
22. ResponseTek.com
23. CrazyEgg.com
24. Oracle.com
25. Custora.com
26. Clarabridge.com
27. VWO.com
28. SDL.com
29. Foresee.com
30. Segment.com
31. SellerLabs.com
32. Sailthru.com
33. Clicktale.com
34. InMoment.com
35. HeapAnalytics.com
36. UserZoom.com
37. GoSquared.com
38. RJMetrics.com
39. Alteryx.com
40. Satmetrix.com
41. Webtrends.com
42. Radius.com
43. Qualaroo.com
44. LiveOps.com
45. Nice.com
46. Selligent.com
47. Nextopia.com
48. Kampyle.com
49. Keen.io
50. Monetate.com
5 Clever Ways to Optimize the Web Experience
Improving consumers' experience doesn't need to be a burden; discover some fun, creative and clever ways to optimize the digital experience,
here.